We’re continuing in our series in the Sermon on the Mount and today we’re having the last talk in the series for the time being.
Today, I’m going to focus on the first three verses of today’s passage, verses 19-21, and one phrase in particular. In v.19, Jesus says, ‘DON’T store up treasure on earth’. In v.20 he says, ‘DO store up treasure in heaven’. Then we come to the phrase I want to focus on. In v.21 he says, ‘For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also’.
I find this surprising for several reasons.
First, Jesus is saying that we can decide where our hearts are. Do we really have that kind of control over our hearts?
Second, Jesus seems to take it as a given that we might want to change where our hearts are.
And third, Jesus is saying that how we spend our money will affect where our hearts are.
I’m going to take a look at those three points and then draw out some practical applications.
The FIRST SURPRISING THING is that – according to Jesus – WE can decide where our hearts are!
Do you find that surprising?
People sometimes talk about ‘nature’ versus ‘nurture’. Is who we are the result of our DNA? Or is it the result of our environment – our parents, the country we were born into, and so on?
We often think that our likes and dislikes, the things we set our hearts on, are a deep-rooted part of us. They’re almost part of our DNA. One person likes company; another likes to be on their own. One person likes fishing; another likes motorsports. That’s simply the way we are. That’s what we think.
But when we look into the Bible, we see that people’s hearts are not very fixed at all. God can influence our hearts, other people can influence our hearts, and we can influence our hearts.
GOD can influence our hearts. For example, in the Bible we sometimes read that God hardens people’s hearts. But God can also revive people’s hearts. Or he can incline people’s hearts towards something. There’s a proverb which says, ‘The king’s heart is a stream of water in the hand of the Lord; he turns it wherever he will’ [Proverbs 21:1]. On one occasion, God told the people of Israel ‘And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh’ [Ezekiel 36:26]. So God can profoundly influence our hearts.
OTHER PEOPLE can also influence our heart. For example, there’s a psalm where David wrote, ‘Reproaches have broken my heart’ [Psalm 69:20]. People’s scorn and criticism affected David’s heart. But we can also positively influence other people’s hearts, by the things we say, by our encouragement, and by our prayers. Other people can influence our hearts.
And WE can also influence our own hearts. For example, the writer of Ecclesiastes – probably Solomon – wrote that he gave his heart up to despair (Ecclesiastes 2:20). No doubt depression can be a medical condition. But in this instance, Solomon was conscious that he just let his heart go in a particular direction. In the time of the early church, someone called Ananias gave some money to the church. But there was something deceptive about the way he did it. Peter asked him, ‘Ananias, why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit…? What does that tell us? Satan had filled Ananias’ heart. But Peter asked Ananias how it happened. Ananias had control. He had allowed Satan into his heart.
These examples show that God can influence our hearts. Other people can influence our hearts. And, most importantly from the point of view of what we’re talking about, WE can influence our own hearts. So the idea that is implied in what Jesus is saying, that WE can decide where our hearts are, isn’t actually surprising.
Let’s go on to the SECOND SURPRISING THING. Jesus said ‘DON’T store up treasure on earth … DO store up treasure in heaven … For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also’. The implication is that we might want to change where our hearts are! Do you find that surprising?
Do you know the song, ‘Don't go changing, to try and please me’? The singer is saying, in effect, ‘I accept YOU as YOU ARE.’ There’s another song which is similar. It starts ‘Don't try to change me, or rearrange me … accept ME for the way that I AM.’ A lot of people would agree with these songs. I don’t want you to change. And don’t try to change me. And yet Jesus clearly assumes that we might very well want to change. We might want to change where our hearts are, what our hearts are set on. He’s assuming that we might want to become different people to who we are at present! That goes against the view of many people today. But it’s at the core of the Christian faith. As Christians, we DO want to change. God created us in his image, but that image, to some extent, has been lost. We want to change FROM who we are, but only in ways in which we have drifted from the image of Christ, TO the people God created us to be. People today think, ‘I don’t want you to change. And don’t try to change me.’ But that isn’t the Christian’s attitude. We WANT to change, back to the design God had for us.
So, Jesus’ assumption that we might want to change where our hearts are isn’t actually surprising either.
Let’s go on to the THIRD SURPRISING THING. The third surprising thing is that how we spend our money can affect where our hearts are. Do you find that surprising?
What we do can affect our mood. I think we can understand that. Rudyard Kipling wrote a children’s poem called ‘How the Camel Got His Hump’. In the poem, the camel has a hump. Kipling compared the camel to people. People can also get ‘the hump’. If you’ve got the hump then you’re grumpy. You’re in a bad mood. In the poem, Kipling’s solution is to get out in the garden and dig. Dig hard. I suppose he’s speaking from experience.
Let me give a more personal example. This one involves money. I like running. But there’s one part of me that wants to run and one part of me that doesn’t. I can help the part of me that wants to run with money. What do I do? I pay about £30 or £40 and enter a half marathon. I put the date in my diary. I’m then committed to the run. And because I know I’m going to do the half-marathon I am motivated to train. I want to run more than I did. By paying some money, I’ve directed my heart.
We can find a similar example in the Bible. There was a time in Israel’s history when Israel split into a northern kingdom and a southern kingdom. Jerusalem was in the southern kingdom and that’s where the temple was. Someone called Jeroboam was the king in the northern kingdom. He was afraid that people would go back to Jerusalem and make sacrifices in the temple there. So we read that Jeroboam said in his heart, ‘If this people go up to offer sacrifices in the temple of the Lord at Jerusalem, then the heart of this people will turn again to their lord, to Rehoboam king of Judah’ [1 Kings 12:27]. Jeroboam understood the principle that Jesus was explaining. Where the people put their treasure – made sacrifices, in this case –
their hearts would follow.
So this third point, the idea that how we spend our money can affect where our hearts, isn’t surprising either.
Where have we reached? We’ve seen that we actually have a lot of control over where our hearts are. We’ve seen that we might well want to change where our hearts are. And we’ve seen that we can use our money – or more generally, our treasure – to direct our hearts.
Just a note on that point ... money can certainly be treasure. Another kind of treasure is time. Our home can be a treasure. Lots of things can be treasure. Jesus said ‘treasure’, not simply money, so we need to be conscious of what treasure is for us.
So, if all this is true, what should we do? Jesus has two instructions. ‘DON’T store up treasure on earth.’ ‘DO store up treasure in heaven’. There are two things we have to do to guide our hearts. One is a DON’T; one is a DO.
John Wesley once preached a sermon in which he talked about Jesus’ instruction, ‘DON’T store up treasure on earth.’ I’d like to show you part of a video of a re-enactment of his sermon. [About the first two minutes of this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFqFtDgaI5E.] What’s Wesley’s point? Most of us who live in wealthier countries are not very good at observing Jesus’ command not to store up treasure on earth.
Recently, I’ve been applying Jesus’ instruction to not store up treasure on earth to some things we had in our attic. I had some silver items in our attic that I’d been hanging on to for quite a few years. I decided that they weren’t being very useful in the attic so I put one on EBay and took the rest over to an auction house in Winchester. They have been gradually selling them. They haven’t all been sold yet, but so far, the sale has raised about £1000. I’ll give that to Christians in the middle belt of Nigeria who are being persecuted.
Not storing up treasure might mean NOT acquiring treasure in the first place. Or it might mean disposing of treasure, so that we don’t store it up.
We can have money and we can use money. But money can’t be allowed to control us. It can’t be allowed to rule our hearts. We can possess possessions. But we can also be possessed by possessions. If that happens, Jesus is no longer Lord.
Let me conclude. There are lots of reasons we should be careful with the treasures of time, money and gifts God has blessed us with. But the main reason Jesus gives here, to be careful where we put our wealth, is that where we put our wealth determines where our heart is.
So, you have heard what Jesus has taught. Where do you want your heart to be? On earth or in heaven? Decide that, and you will know where to place your treasure.
Talk given at Rosebery Park Baptist Church, Bournemouth, UK, 24th July 2022
